“The tentacle is wrapped around your head! Hold still!”
“I cannot move. I am buried.”
“Then you're the perfect bait! Mom, take a picture!”
I'm laughing too hard to hold my camera steady, but I pull out my phone and take the shot anyway. Paul's head, surrounded by a demolished fortress, three boys in mid-battle, sand flying, shovels waving, Aidan's face a mask of heroic determination.
Paul's expression in the photo is caught between genuine alarm and complete helplessness—and buried under both, joy. Pure, startled, unwilling joy. He forgot how to have fun. He's remembering against his will.
“The kraken is dead,” Paul says. “You killed it. Great work. Can somebody dig me out now?”
“You can't leave,” Aidan says, horrified. “There might be a second one.”
“There is not a second?—”
“There's always a second kraken. That's how they work.”
“That is not how they work.”
“How do you know? Are you a kraken expert?”
I snort so hard water almost comes out of mynose. Paul's eyes cut to me. I press my hand over my mouth but it's too late—I'm gone. Laughing with my whole body, shoulders shaking, tears starting.
“You think this is funny,” Paul says.
“I think this is the funniest thing I've ever seen.”
“I am buried alive and being attacked by children.”
“You volunteered.”
“I was tricked.”
“You were asked. By eight-year-olds. And you said yes.”
The boys are now decorating his head with shells. Olson has placed a scallop shell on Paul's hair like a crown. Aidan is drawing what he says is a protective ward against krakens but looks like a lopsided star.
“You need protection,” Aidan explains.
“I need to be unburied.”
“Protection first. Then freedom.”
“Whose rule?”
“Mine. I just made it.”
Paul closes his eyes, takes a breath, and when he opens them, he looks directly at me. What he says is so quiet the boys don't hear it.
“Your kid is incredible.”
It's not a complaint. It's closer to wonder—likeAidan is a phenomenon Paul didn't expect and doesn't know how to categorize.
“Yeah,” I say. “He is.”
The moment sits between us, warm and salt-aired and real.
Then Aidan dumps a bucket of wet sand on Paul's head.
